


Children of War

by delcatty_got_your_tongue



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben is not, Gen, I don't know enough about Star Wars to do this help, I may expand, Poe is Force-Sensitive, twitter made me do this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 12:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20760125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delcatty_got_your_tongue/pseuds/delcatty_got_your_tongue
Summary: Ben Solo grows up as an angry and bitter man because of his parents' neglect, but is not born with the power to crush men's throats with a thought. Instead it is Poe Dameron - born on Yavin IV and in the former-Sith-Great-Temple-now-refurbished Rebel base - who hears voices as a child.





	Children of War

**Author's Note:**

> I very rarely pop into Twitter but it is almost always fanfic related content I look at when there. Then I saw this thread (https://twitter.com/dameroandor/status/1175614791089418240) and within 24 hours had most of the below out. This is more like an outline than actual prose (albeit an outline of   
almost 1,500 words) but I may expand it if I can figure out what the rest of this story is about.

Ben Solo grows up as an angry and bitter man because of his parents' neglect, but is not born with the power to crush men's throats with a thought. Instead it is Poe Dameron - born on Yavin IV and in the former-Sith-Great-Temple-now-refurbished Rebel base - who hears voices as a child. 

Baby Poe is taken care of by his grandfather while his parents are Rebel pilots in an ongoing war. He is fed stories about their heroism the way he is fed milk, how they are fighting to make the world a safer place for him. When Shara Bey finally retires from the Rebel Alliance, she returns with a Force-sensitive tree fragment, and plants it with Poe in their new home in Yavin 4. When Poe is six she teaches him to fly. She teaches him constantly that change is necessary for growth - he never quite understands what she means when he is happy for life always to stay the same. When he is eight, she dies. 

Poe's grief brings down his home - literally. Kes Dameron calls the Skywalker twins to visit because he doesn't know what else to do. Leia brings along Ben, who is five and already too-big and throws tantrums all the time. While the Skywalkers and Kes discuss Poe's outburst, Poe shows an awestruck Ben how to pilot an A-Wing and how he can make things move with his mind. 

Ben likes Poe, who teases him, but talks to him and hugs him and notices when he is in the room. Ben looks at Poe and sees his future. He will, like his father, be the best pilot in the Galaxy. And in a few years, maybe he will also be able to make the rocks float. (He doesn't want to think of his mother dying. It won't happen like that for him - his grandfather was a Jedi knight and so is his uncle. He won't need that to unlock his powers.) 

Poe likes Ben because Ben is the first to have heard of his powers and not looked at him with a worried expression on his face. Ben only tells him that his uncle is a Jedi and that Poe will save the galaxy like him one day. Ben also listens to everything he says. (Poe does not think about his mother.) 

The Skywalkers determine that Poe is, for the moment, in control, and leave him with his father. After his mother dies, Poe is no longer told stories about his mother’s heroics. His father can barely say her name. When he goes to school, he tells everyone about how his mother was a hero in the war but no one knows who Shara Bey is, and laughs at him. He shoves them into the mud without touching them. 

The two families meet up every few months. Poe likes these occasions because that is the only time his father will bring up his mother, when he has had too much Corellian wine and he and Leia talk about all their time together in the war. But there is also Ben, who even though is already taller than him, is like his little brother, who follows him around and worships the ground he walks on. 

Poe starts to hear people's thoughts while Ben can't even make a datapad twitch. Luke starts his Jedi Academy and Poe is his first student. 

The two boys keep in touch. Ben tells Poe about learning to fly the Millenium Falcon. Poe complains that Luke makes them sit still and meditate all the time. They don't talk about other things. 

(Ben wonders if he had been born Force-sensitive he would be less of a disappointment to his parents. His parents can't seem to stay in a room for longer than an hour without fighting. Every time his father takes him out into space his mother yells at them both for taking Ben away from his tutors without her permission. His uncle used to drop by and it would help defuse things but of course he's now on another planet training the-boy-he-could-have-been. He doesn't hear voices in his head but everyone and everything is still so loud.) 

(In his dreams, Poe hears someone telling him that if he'd only been stronger his mother would not have died.)

Some things remain the same. Luke senses a darkness in loud boisterous Poe - the way he fights to always be stronger, faster, better than everyone else. One night, he enters Poe's sleeping quarters and for a brief moment sees the Dark shadow that Poe will cast across the galaxy. He draws his sabre by instinct. Poe wakes and flees. 

The news breaks that Senator Leia Organa's father is Darth Vader. Ben watches his mother's political career collapse over a parentage she could not help, hears that Poe has slaughtered half the Jedi trainees and taken the other half to kriff-knows-where. He is sick of this Jedi Sith Force banthashit and leaves his family to look for Poe so he can beat sense into him. Poe might be three years older but he has been taller for years. 

(In another world Ben thinks of his grandfather as the only one who would understand his rage. In this one, he is regularly spirited into space with his father and knows that there are worlds and people that exist without ever knowing or needing the Force.) 

He eventually finds Poe, but not before Snoke seeks Poe out and offers him power and a place by his side. Poe accepts. He learns Force secrets as quickly as Snoke dishes them out. Snoke sharpens his aggression and competitive nature to the point of a well-honed sword. In another world, Kylo Ren knows anger and is constantly ruled by fear. In this one, the only thing Poe had ever feared was to die forgotten, and he is determined to be so powerful now that history will be carved around him. When Poe feels Ben Solo land on the planet he is on, he meets the other man. 

Ben almost shoots Poe down on sight - a man in black wearing a mask approaching him across a field. He can’t sense the Force but he knows danger when he sees it. Poe stops the blast with a wave of his hand. It is only when Poe takes off his mask and laughs at him for having the reflexes of a dead loth-cat, does Ben lower his gun. Poe asks Ben to join him in the First Order - his specific words being "You’re not as good as pilot as me, Benny, but you’re close." 

Ben says no. (Ben Solo is tired of politics and grand narratives and everything that his mother had devoted her life to and away from her family, and how easily all that effort had come to nothing. The universe can devour itself without him.) 

(Poe Dameron, unlike Kylo Ren, is not prone to property destroying temper tantrums. But that does not mean he doesn't have a temper. He grips the hilt of his lightsaber for long minutes after Ben said 'no'. He had needed the approval of a worshipful five-year-old boy to tell him that he has done the right thing.) 

Ben tells Poe to come home. His father misses him. Leia needs him. And Luke has disappeared and is not speaking to anyone. 

Poe tells Ben about Luke and Ben - to Poe's immense relief - believes him. "Let everything go to hell," Ben says. "We can leave a message, they can figure everything out themselves. We can disappear." 

But here is the fundamental difference between them - Ben Solo is the child of the two greatest war heroes, the grandchild of the most notorious dictator of said war. Ben Solo has always been too-tall and too-big and the first person people look at in the room even when he hunches into himself. Ben Solo has never wanted to be anyone. 

Meanwhile Poe Dameron has always had to be loud and funny and charming to get people to notice him. Poe has always been afraid of disappearing. 

Ben calls his father and lets him know that he’ll be joining him on one of his smuggling routes in the Outer Rims. They can meet up with Leia after that. Maybe spend some time somewhere quiet, like in Naboo. A few days later, Han Solo’s corpse is found on Tatooine. Ben knows a threat when he sees one. He disappears. 

Years later, a scavenger finds a droid - one with a map to the last Jedi. 

On that same day, Ben Solo stops in one of the worst desert wastelands he has ever been in, searching for the Millennium Falcon. 

And Taral Ren arrives on Jakku looking for a droid.


End file.
